


The Theory That Explains It All:  Rebellion, Redemption, and Reylo in The Rise of Skywalker

by Anise



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Armitage Hux Needs A Hug, F/M, Gen, Palpatine has a plan, Redeemed Ben Solo, Star Wars Theory, The Rise of Skywalker theory, answer questions about The Rise of Skywalker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:27:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21739072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anise/pseuds/Anise
Summary: COMPLETE! Less than two weeks out from The Rise of Skywalker, we all desperately want answers to our burning questions about the last Star Wars film. This theory explains it all. Okay, it doesn't tell us whether or not Porgs will have a speaking role. But it does cover Palpatine's plots, Hux's temptations, Reylo, Bendemption, and much more.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 7
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

So here we are, less than two weeks out from the release of The Return of Skywalker, the end of a nine-film series that redefined cinema and popular culture all over the world, and the last chapter of an era. (Well… unless Disney decides that there’s money in continuing the Skywalker story, anyway.) And let’s just say that there are questions that we all want to know the answers to. There are zillions of specific points that we all want to be addressed when it comes to this ninth and last film. Some of these are extremely specific, and some are much more basic to the story. What will the central conflict of TroS be? What will happen to the characters? Will Kylo be redeemed? What’s Rey’s role? What about Hux? Will we get Reylo of any kind? Will any major characters be killed off? Where are the Porgs? And maybe more than any other single question, how exactly is Palpatine going to fit into all of this? We know he’s coming back, but how, why, when, where, etc?

What’s remarkable, I think—especially compared to a lot of blockbusters in the past few years-- is that we don’t know the answer to any of these questions. We obviously have clues in trailers and photos and first looks and toys, we’ve had extras and footage and lots of images, but we don’t have answers. Star Wars has always done an amazing job of not revealing the real secrets before a film comes out. We all know there’s been a trend in the last several years of trailers and promo materials that give away so much that you wonder what the reason even was to see the movie. (Looking at you, _Batman vs. Superman_. By the end of the last trailer, we knew every single plot beat. There have been a lot of other culprits too, though.) But this has never been the case with Star Wars, and Disney has raised this to an art. Nothing that we saw from them before TFA and TLJ gave away the real secrets. The whole point of all the promo materials was that we never get anything but hints, tantalizing clues, false trails, and red herrings.

This isn’t actually difficult to do. All that a production company needs to do is to not spell out everything and give away the plot of the film. Choosing to give everything away in trailers and promos is a choice that was made for a lot of recent films for whatever weird reason (it’s never really worked or been a good idea,) and Disney very wisely chose to not it. If they managed this for the first two films, then keeping secrets is obviously been continued for TRoS. You don’t need Sherlock to figure this out.

All of this means that we don’t know what the answers to what these vital questions are, and it’s important to say that I don’t pretend to _know_ what they are. There are an infinite number of ways that all the central plot points and character beats could go. This theory isn’t meant to deal with all of them. l don’t know how Leia will die, or how many times Luke’s ghost will show up, or every detail of exactly what Palpatine will do, or whether or not Porgs will get a speaking role (I hope so, but I’m not optimistic at the point) But I do have a new theory that I think does answer the most vital questions.

Does Kylo get redeemed? Is Reylo really possible, and if so, why could it happen? Does Hux gets a much more important role than he’s had up to this point, like something to do besides blowing up planets and getting thrown around on the floor? Maybe most importantly of all, what is Palpatine’s role-- how does he fit in and make sense?

I have a theory that explains how all of this could happen. I’ve worked on it for months, and I think that maybe I’m kind of insane to even post it now, because we’re less than two weeks from the real thing. But I think I have to. It’s more than just a really cool vague idea. It doesn’t have the details to answer every question about every single thing that’s going to happen in TroS, but it has the details we need to answer some major points. This is the theory that encompasses six main questions about what will happen and what must happen in TRoS—and IMHO, it’s the one theory that best explains how all of these vital questions can be answered. I’ve narrowed all of this down and summarized it as five basic questions that must be answered in TRoS, and exactly how and why this theory answers (or can answer) them. These are:

  * **What is Palpatine’s role, including the secrets to exactly how he returns?**
  * **Who else will be involved? Who will help him? Who will he use in his quet for power?**
  * **How does this relate to Kylo’s redemption, including whether or not it happens and how it begins?**
  * **How does this relate to any type of Reylo?**
  * **And finally, a fandom question: what might all of this mean for plotlines, characters, and ships in fandom?**



And here the answers are, one by one…. In the next chapter! This entire theory WILL be posted before the movie, so keep watching for the next update.


	2. The First Key: Palpatine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks to all readers, kudo-ers, and reviewers, especially: ReyloForever, Kaprysia, MFA101, and Silver_Tigress !

Welcome back! In this chapter, we’re going to begin to explore the most important questions that need to be answered in TroS—and we’ll start to see how the theory covers them. This part contains a lot of important details, so we’ll go through the questions one by one.

  * **What is Palpatine’s role, and exactly how does he return?**



This is where we have to start, because Palpatine is the key. He is the one unifying factor in Star Wars through all three trilogies. (George Lucas even decided that the Emperor was important enough to insert into _The Empire Strikes Back_ after the fact _._ ) Emperor Palpatine is the one person whose plots have been the driving force behind this entire narrative. And we know that he is coming back in TRoS. But we don’t know is exactly how this return happens. He can’t be one of the Force Ghosts we’ve seen before, like Obi-Wan and Yoda, because we know that Sith Lords aren’t capable of doing this (and unlike Snoke or Kylo Ren, that’s what Palps was.) We can’t rule out the possibility that he could return as some kind of spirit in a form that is available to Sith Lords, but for reasons that we’ll discuss later, this doesn’t make any sense. There’s no point in just doing a flashback. Trying to use him as some memory, idea, or concept is too vague. We know that whatever his role is, it has to be significant, and that he’s going to be capable of directly affecting people and events, as he has to be.

I think that it’s very significant that we don’t know what form he’ll be returning in so that he can accomplish these things. Think about it. If the exact way that Palpatine comes back isn’t important, then that exact way would have been revealed by now. If it didn’t matter whether we knew what form he would return in, then we would have seen that form. The trailer would show a Sith spirit, a flashback, or the original physical form of Palpatine. But nothing that we have seen has shown any of this. All we’ve seen is the old throne from ROTJ. All we’ve heard is a voice. The form Palpatine returns in has been deliberately kept from us. And this is the key. 

So how does this happen, and what is the form he takes?

  * **How DOES Palpatine come back?**



In order to control people and events, I think that Palpatine has to come back in a physical body. He can’t just be some kind of Sith force ghost, flashback, or memory. We already know from canon that the First Order is prejudiced against allowing non-human species in positions of power. (It’s literally been stated that Thrawn never would have been allowed to hold the positions he did if he hadn’t been in the Outer Rim, away from the centers of power.) This means that Palpatine must return in a _human_ body, which already rules out a lot of possibilities. So the next question is pretty obvious—which body does he return in, and how does he manage it?

One theory I’ve heard is that Palpatine somehow manages to “live forever” in his original form (that is, he didn’t actually die at the end of ROTJ.) This has a **lot** of logical problems (beginning with the fact that his physical body wasn’t doing so well to begin with.) But the biggest obstacle is that canon information ruled out the possibility back in the prequels. Darth Plagueis was trying to maintain immortality in his own body, but we know from RoTS that he was never able to figure out how to do it. Palpatine, his apprentice, killed him first. I’ve always thought that what is being implied here is that Plagueis was never going to succeed anyway because it just isn’t possible. Knowing that, Palpatine decided that his master had to go. This does show us, though, that Palpatine was always looking for the secret of eternal life. In both canon and in Legends, this central desire of his has always been made very clear.

The best and easiest way to accomplish this goal would be for him to inhabit or take over someone else’s human body. And that’s exactly what I think he will do. We get a lot of clues about this from what Palpatine does in Legends. As we know, Disney does not consider the legends material to be canon, but—and it’s a big but—they have taken aspects of the new Star Wars plotline from Legends. They have done a lot of picking and choosing. There are definitely things from the pre-Disney takeover that they have retained, or have taken elements of. What this means, I think, is that we do have a lot of clues from Legends as to what could happen now—it’s just that we know it won’t happen in _exactly_ the same way as it did in Legends.

The key to how this will happen is the concept of “essence transfer.” As Wookiepedia tells us, “Transfer essence, also known as essence transfer or transfer life, was a radical [dark side](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Dark_side_of_the_Force/Legends) [Force](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/The_Force/Legends) [power](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Force_power/Legends) used to transfer a person's consciousness into another body, or in some cases an inanimate object. Ancient [Sith Lords](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sith_Lord/Legends) and other powerful darksiders used this technique to cheat death again and again, haunting their tombs and possessing those who stumbled across their sarcophagi in order to continue their reign of terror. In more recent eras, masters of this dark side art had used advanced [cloning](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Cloning/Legends) technology to assure their immortality.” 

The explanation for how this plays out in Palpatine’s plans lies in the 1991-1992 Legends series, _Dark Empire._ And these are the elements that I think Disney took from Legends to create the exact way that Palpatine comes back in TRoS. Basically, in this series, Palpatine the “essence transfer”, which Sith lords have always been able to do. They accomplished it in the past through Sith objects. Palpatine’s twist on this was to create many clones of himself and keep transferring his essence to one after the other. (However, the essence actually could be transferred to anyone at all.)

I really think that for TRoS, Disney chose the most dramatic and interesting variation possible on this idea. Some random clone just happening to be the next one in line to get Palpatine’s essence isn’t very interesting. What would be really fascinating, and would have the most dramatic possibilities, would be to have Palpatine “take over” a person whose character has already been established. While this was very difficult to do in essence transfer in Legends, and also very dangerous, it wasn’t impossible. There are also specific reasons, which we’ll get to a bit later, for why ET to an independent person who wasn’t a clone could work in current canon. And I think that’s what will happen.

So along this line of thought, who would be the transfer victim or willing participant? Who would be “possessed?” In the next chapter, I’m going to go through the list of possibilities from least to most likely… and this is where it really starts to get interesting.

Note: The last chapter will have a Works Cited section, but for now, this one is really worth checking out: [Great Wookiepedia article on essence transfer. ](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Transfer_essence)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all readers, reviewers, and kudo-ers!

So now we’re starting to get to the really interesting part: whose body will Palpatine be taking over for his return? But before we do… You all should probably know that when writing this theory, I am really totally ignoring all of the leaks. The reason is that there is no way to know what’s genuine and what isn’t. This was true of all of the supposedly accurate “leaks” before TFA and especially TLJ, and it will be the same way with TroS. Some of them might be true, a couple of them might be true, and NONE of them might be true. So I am going 100% by analyzing the official information that we have. And believe me, I don’t have any guarantee that I’m more right than anybody else! 😉 But whether I’m right or wrong, I will get us there by examining the known facts and putting them together in a way that I think makes sense.

So who will Palpatine possess?

  * **Rey?**



She is possible, but for a variety of reasons, I doubt she will be the transfer target-- at least not the Rey that we've known for two films (and if she is, I don't think the attempt will work.) That’s not to say that something related to possession couldn’t happen. The best argument in its favor is that it's at least possible that somehow, in some weird way, she has some type of clone material from Palpatine. (That was pretty much my first thought about the meaning of that “clone” scene down in the cave on TLJ.) Palpatine could get a tremendous amount of power from possessing this strong Force user. So at the end of the day, this is a possibility that can’t be dismissed.

If I was betting money on any of this, though, it wouldn’t go towards Palps!Rey being the endgame. Rey has always been shown as too strong-willed to let anyone else control her, especially a villain like Palpatine. Think about it—if she wouldn’t give in to the seductive power of Kylo’s attempt to control her, why would she do it for Palpatine? This independence is a huge part of the essence of her character. And the “dark Rey” image holding the double-bladed red lightsaber that we do have from Disney... if anything, it goes against this happening: it’s just too obvious. They are not going to give anything away that easily. 

That having been said, one possibility that did occur to me is the question of whether Dark!Rey was a Palpatine clone of some kind while the Rey that we know is not. Could Palpatine take over this dark clone version of Rey? I think that something related to this scenario would my #2 theory about what's most likely to happen, although I doubt it would happen as straightforward essence transfer. it does make sense in a lot of ways. We already know from the behavior of Rex, Commander Wolffe, and Gregor that some clones did find a way to disobey Order 66. This proves that all clones don't always act in the same way. So one of Rey's clones might be eager to help Palpatine, allow him to possess her, or fight on his side while the Rey we've gotten to know in the sequels is the opposite. The plot twist that gets around the "too obvious" problem could be that Dark!Rey was only a clone. I think the biggest problem, though, is that while it's certainly an interesting idea, and it can't be said that it's unsupported by the canon evidence we have, it's also a pretty out-there idea. It's fun to talk about but not necessarily very realistic. Even it something like this actually did happen, though, I think that it still wouldn't work. It could be something that Palpatine attempts but fails to accomplish. A dark Rey clone might help him but then be defeated. So while this entire idea can’t be completely dismissed at all, I think it’s not a likely one.

  * **Kylo Ren?**



This one is certainly a possibility. Palpatine was pretty clearly the real power behind the throne influencing him all along (and yes, I DID write this before the trailer where this was actually spelled out! ;) ) Snoke was convinced that he himself pulled the strings, but he never actually did. He was just the puppet. His prequel equivalent, for example, would be Dooku. The presence that haunted Ben through his childhood was never really Snoke, but Palpatine. (And since this theory was first posted, that has been confirmed.) A key feature is that he was able to keep influencing Kylo through Darth Vader’s helmet. Palpatine already has spent a lot of time and effort lurking in the shadows and pulling strings behind the scenes. Is it possible that he could step out and continue his control in the open by possessing Kylo?

But while the possibility can't just be dismissed-- any more than it could with Rey--there are several reasons why this possibility doesn’t really work. Kylo has already rejected being explicitly controlled by an obvious outside force. He succeeded in doing this with Snoke. There’s every reason to believe that he would reject Palpatine controlling him for this very reason. Kylo is a strong Force user, so like Rey, he’s going to know if Palpatine is trying to possess him. (Which is another reason why Rey isn’t the most likely candidate either.) And we have every reason to believe that if Kylo makes any effort at all to dislodge Palpatine’s attempt to possess him, he will succeed. Think about it: if this wasn’t the case, then why wouldn’t Palpatine have already taken over Kylo? Why wouldn’t he have done this back when Kylo was Ben Skywalker?

From _Dark Empire,_ we know that an attempt to overcome a spirit already residing in a body was so dangerous that Dark Side users generally didn’t try it. When they failed in that attempt, their own disembodied spirits were sent to Chaos (essentially Hell.) This would be why Palpatine would not try to take over either Rey or Kylo. I do think that Dark Empire has information that Disney is taking from Legends, but in fact, we have proof already from film canon that this wouldn’t work. Palpatine can’t just completely possess or take over a person, because he didn’t do that with Anakin. If he could have done this, it would have made much more sense than the indirect method of just influencing him. The Mace Windu attack would have been the perfect opportunity.

Palpatine could have handed off control of the Republic to Anakin, who he already placed on the Jedi Council. He could have shed the very physically damaged body. He would have made himself a martyr by seemingly dying and being killed off by the jedi, not just wounded. It would have made so much more sense. But he didn’t do it because he couldn’t. I don’t think it’s something you can learn how to do. It’s something that simply doesn’t work for the reasons Dark Empire gave, particularly with a strong Force user. Palpatine can _influence_ a person who is strong in the Force, as he did with Anakin, but he can’t just take over the body and mind. The fact that Vader did fool Palpatine at the very end of RotJ proves that point. Basically, while I think it's not out of the question that Palpatine might make a failed attempt to take over Kylo's body, it isn't something that I really think could work as the endgame either.

So to recap, Rey and Kylo are both not the best choices. However, Palpatine needs to control the body of someone who already has a position of power, or there’s no point. So who is this going to be? As it turns out, there’s only one possible person that makes any sense to fill this role. And in the next chapter we’ll find out who that is. 😉


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers, especially rav69! 😊

  * **So who will Palpatine control?**



There’s only one person who is ideal in every way. He’s in a major position of power, and yet he’s not a Force user. He has every motivation to allow and welcome Palpatine’s takeover, and I think he would believe he can turn the tables and use Palpatine. And he’s also the key to the way that the plot of TRoS ultimately needs to go and the ending it needs to have. He will be Palpatine’s Achilles heel—because he’s the only person who is guaranteed to cause Palpatine’s great plan to backfire, which in turn answers the questions about the other things that will happen, such as whether or not Kylo can be redeemed, the nature of Rey’s involvement, and what their relationship is with each other. .

The one person, and the only person, who perfectly fills this role is Armitage Hux.

 **Hux will be the key.** His central role will happen in this way. It has deliberately not even been hinted at in promo materials. There are canon clues, but they are not in the trailers, images, etc., that everyone has seen. In fact, if anything, we’ve been shown deliberate red herrings to take our attention away from what Hux’s role is going to be, and that it’s inextricable from what happens to Kylo, Rey, and their relationship with each other.

Now let’s look at why.

To begin with, there are many logical, plot-based reasons why Palpatine would choose him to possess.

General Hux already runs the military. This is exactly how Palpatine succeeded last time with the clone army

He knows the secrets of the “Death Star” type of weapon. If he wants to, he can just build another Starkiller base… exactly as Palpatine did.

He already has a past childhood of abuse when he was helplessly manipulated by a strong male authority figure, the horror who was his father, Brendol Hux. (We get this information from several canon sources, most notably the Phasma novelization and the recent _Rise of the Resistance_ comic, which added more detail to Hux’s miserable childhood and emphasized just how much his father controlled him. Can we just have a short break to give little Armitage a hug? Okay, back to the theory…)

At the end of TLJ, he’s already one step away from proclaiming himself the new Supreme Leader. (And there is every reason to believe that this is exactly where he’s headed at the start of TRoS.) If Kylo had died, if Rey had killed him in Snoke’s throne room instead of sparing him, that’s exactly what would have happened in TLJ already. (And this might also help to explain why Rey had such a strong feeling that she should let him live, that “his life wasn’t hers to take”—if she’d killed Kylo, Hux would have been the Supreme Leader by the end of TLJ. As we saw, he wouldn’t have hesitated to destroy the entire Resistance. He wouldn’t have been distracted by Luke Skywalker’s Force Projection, as Kylo was.)

In short, Hux starts out exactly where Palpatine wanted to end up throughout the entire prequel trilogy. He is primarily a military leader and the general of the army already, so Palpatine can skip that tiresome step of being a career politician, which is what he had to do last time. In Hux’s body, Palpatine wouldn’t need to turn a Senate or anyone who’s been democratically elected. He can have exactly what he wants, which is direct power. Hux already has everything that Palpatine had to fight to get, from TPM through AoTC to TRoS. He has exactly the right combination of qualities for Palpatine to use. Literally nobody else in the SW universe has them all, or really anywhere close to all. 

The parallels between the two aren’t exact, although I don’t think the parallels are the most important part either. Hux is primarily a military leader, not a politician, as Palps was. He isn’t interested in turning a senate; he wants power directly. But then, he doesn’t have to turn the senate because they’re already gone. What counts is that he has exactly the right combination of qualities for Palpatine to use.

So basically, Palpatine will at least try to take over Hux’s body and mind to defeat Kylo and rule the galaxy. And unlike the result he would get with Kylo, Rey, or someone like Leia, I think that everything points towards Palps succeeding very easily and quickly. 

You may be wondering about the clone theory, which basically says that Armitage Hux is actually Palpatine’s clone. How does idea this fit in? I’m not completely sure. I think that the possession theory works whether Hux is a clone or not. But I think that the clone theory, if true, only makes the possession theory much more likely. To the point where, if I could be sure that Hux was a clone, I’d bet a lot of money on the takeover theory right now. There really isn’t anyplace you can do this, btw… predictit. Com only handles political bets. If you look at every image we have from any source of how Sheev Palpatine looked as a young man, Hux certainly could pass for a clone. And there's a lot about his history before the age of five that has never been revealed in canon. 

The reason not to put everything on the clone theory, though, is this: it’s based on ideas that seem like they should make sense rather than anything that is completely supported by the canon we have. The canon background information we have on Hux basically comes from the Aftermath trilogy and the flashback scene in the Rise of the Resistance comic, and I don't see irrefutable evidence there for it. If somebody found Hux wandering around on Jakku as a 5-year-old, or if he or Brendol had any pre-existing connection to Palpatine at all, it would be a much easier argument to make, I can't even find any connection that ever existed between Palpatine and Arkanis. The clone theory rests a little too much on the fact that they're both strawberry blonds (Palpatine started out that way.) I can relate to this, because Armitage Hux has my exact hair color, which is pretty rare... but is this really enough to build a solid theory on? It might be true, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Hux did turn out to be a Palps clone, but I also wouldn’t bet everything on it.

Still, the clone theory is very possible, and it would strengthen the possession theory. Think about how much easier it would be to take over the body and mind of somebody who has your DNA, who started from the base point of your body and mind. If it’s true, I would predict that it’s along the line of this version (thanks to [Jessica Nijs](https://www.facebook.com/jnijs2) for the discussion in the FB Reylux group!)

Hux is some kind of "failed" Palpatine clone. The biological cloning process itself didn’t fail, but it was impossible to clone the Force. Brendol may have been forced to take care of the resulting child, spreading the story that he was an illegitimate child. Brendol certainly hated Armitage, although it’s impossible to say if this because he was actually a Palpatine clone foisted on him, or if Brendol was just a terrible human being and couldn’t stand children in general, especially because Armitage ended up being a better soldier and finding more favor with others, like Rax and Rae Sloane, than he did.  
  


I think this is a good version of the clone theory, and sounds a lot more plausible than some of them. It’s still possible that it might be too far-fetched. But the Palpatine possession theory works either way. Whether Hux is a clone or not, Palpatine still can't come back automatically just because someone IS his clone. The takeover (or at least the attempt) still has to happen. We know from Hux’s interior thoughts in _Phasma_ and _Rise of the Resistance,_ as well as the novelizations of the films, that he hasn’t been taken over by Palpatine yet. The possession still has to happen.

At some point—and I honestly don’t know what that point would be, or what would need to happen first--- the takeover does happen. I think it would be interesting if Hux realizes what’s going on and tries to resist it, but it’s much more likely that he goes along with it enthusiastically. This is also a crucial key to why Hux has to be the possession target. A living person with their own pre-existing personality is almost impossible to take over through essence transfer. But if Hux sees it all as a way to finally guarantee that he will win over everyone else, he would have every reason to cooperate. So Palpatine achieves all his goals through possessing Hux, and he is now the Supreme Leader.

But this actually raises more questions than it answers. How does Palps!Hux relate to the other major question that I promised at the start of the theory we’d get answers to? How does this explain whether Kylo Ren will be or even can be redeemed, and if so, how he would get there? And how does it relate to Reylo? The answer is that the idea of Hux being the one Palpatine takes over or possesses is, in fact, the key to both the redemption of Kylo Ren and some kind of Reylo. And in the next chapter, we’ll understand exactly why.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all readers, reviewers, and kudo-ers! :)

So we’ve seen why Hux makes so much sense as the person who Palpatine would possess, ranging from the fact that he’s in a position of power to the fact that he’s someone who actually would cooperate with possession at first, which is what he needs to do in order for essence transfer to a living person to happen in the first place. But again, we’re left with some pretty major question. _Now_ what happens? Palpatine’s schemes to rule the universe aren’t going to be enough to tell a story or to resolve what was set up with the characters at the end of TLJ. So how does Palps!Hux actually drive the plot?

I think it comes down to the fact that plot points/events aren’t enough all by themselves to drive a story in the most interesting way. They need to drive the decisions that characters make. If a piece of writing, whether script, book, or anything else, is nothing but one plot point after another, then you don’t have a story. Instead, you have the dreaded “bunch of stuff that happens.” For the plot thread of Hux’s possession of Palpatine to be justified, it has to be about more than just the way that Palps makes his power move. It has to relate directly to what other characters decide to do and how they make those choices. And I think this is exactly what does happen. Palps!Hux answers the trickiest question of all, which is, will Kylo be redeemed, and how is it possible?

If we’ve spent a lot of time in fanon, it can be really easy to forget that these questions have not been answered at all in canon—and that in fact, if we only look at canon and nothing else, the answers seem to be “no” and “it’s not.” It’s hard to remember this when we look at fanon. We have 845749q5789423790.pi scenarios for why and how Kylo will be redeemed and turned back into Ben Solo. We have zillions of fanfics. We have assumptions. We have “leaks”, for whatever those are worth. We have clues. But what we don’t have is canon proof, and we really don’t have that. Because honestly, at the end of TLJ, a clearly redeemable Kylo is not a thing. This is not what the impression we get if we’ve read any of the fanfic or we participate in the Reylo fandom at all. But if we are just going by canon, we don’t have Kylo’s redemption, and it doesn’t look like we’re going to get it.

So what we need to do first is to establish that this redemption is both possible and necessary before we really delve into the reasons why Palps!Hux explains why it will happen.

First of all, we do need it. According to the narrative rules that have been set up in Star Wars since 1977, Kylo does need to have some kind of redemption arc. This is partly because the storytelling rules of Western literature demand it from a tragic villain who has had lots of self-doubt and almost turned to the light earlier—it’s just how the narrative goes. (Of course, a much bigger reason is because there is so much precedence for it in Star Wars canon.) Kylo will have a clear redemption arc of some kind. This may not mean ending up as the head of the new Jedi order after the white wedding with Rey, right before the dozen Force-sensitive babies, but everything points to this arc.

If Kylo does make the choice to be redeemed, is the choice itself enough to “redeem” him in some way? In this narrative, the answer has to be yes. It’s for the same reason that we know that this redemption arc is possible in Star Wars: because no matter what the villain has previously done, he’s capable of being redeemed if he repents and makes a sacrifice. 

The precedent for this idea is clearly in previous canon. Darth Vader’s redemption alone proves that this is true. He was redeemed after destroying entire planets and systems and killing so many people that I’m not sure you could even calculate the number. As David Brin pointed out in his (in)famous 1999 essay, _"Star Wars" despots vs. "Star Trek" populists,_ it doesn’t necessarily even make much sense that that one redemptive choice was enough to save Darth Vader. It isn’t very logical that saving his son and rejecting the Emperor at the end was enough to redeem him. This certainly wouldn’t work in our world. But in the Star Wars galaxy, it does work. These are the rules that have been laid down from the start, and they have always been consistent. In this reality, repentance brings forgiveness. It always has, and it always will. But repentance does have to happen first, and I don’t think it’s possible for Kylo to have this emotion or experience without a major trigger making it possible.

Let’s be honest. Without any additional specific reasons to turn to the light, Kylo is not in a great place for canon redemption at the end of TLJ. He just finished killing a lot of the Resistance. He believed that he killed his uncle, and if Luke had been there in the flesh, he would have succeeded. He was completely ready to kill everyone remaining. And that’s just what he plans to do next, at least as far as we know at the end of TLJ (“I’m going to destroy her, and you, and all of it.”) Fanon ideas make it easy to forget where Kylo really is at the start of TRoS, but fanon is really not canon in this instance. This vengeful, power-seeking Supreme Leader is not a person on the verge of redemption and goodness and nice things.

So for Bendemption to be more than a great fanfic plot, we need a plausible scenario for exactly how it could happen and what would trigger it. The Palpatine/Hux possession theory is it—and it’s one of the very few realistic options that could plausibly work given canon.

The real reason is folded into the central obstacle with Kylo’s redemption arc: when Palpatine comes back, however that happens, Kylo has plenty of reasons to join him. At the end of the day, Kylo does have a very long past history with an enormously powerful and older mentor. Palps is far ahead of Snoke in this area, added to the fact that he was the driving force behind Snoke all along That habit might not be so easy to break. Once Kylo knows just how much power Palpatine has always wielded, the temptation to join him will be very high. So Kylo needs an extremely strong, immediate incentive NOT to do this. It can’t just be some kind of vague pull to the light, because we already know that he has explicitly rejected this pull at the end of TLJ.

So what can that specific incentive be? It has to be a big one because of everything that Palpatine could offer him: power, security, the guidance of a master villain who has planned everything in this entire saga, and much more. That’s very seductive stuff. The incentive to not join him has to be immediate, it has to obvious, and most importantly of all, it has to be a logical progression from where Kylo was at the end of TLJ.

And this is where the possibility of Kylo’s redemption arc meets the Palps!Hux theory. The powerful, immediate, believable incentive for Kylo to refuse to join with the returned Palpatine is that **he is in Armitage Hux’s body, and Kylo hates Hux.**

Again, this can be hard to remember when we think of all the slash fanfic. But the truth is that an amazing amount of time has been spent in canon material to both thoroughly show and extensively tell us that Kylo and Hux hate each other. In every encounter they ever have, whether it’s the films, the new books, the comics, or whatever, we are explicitly shown again and again that their hatred couldn’t be stronger. (Yes, the Kylux fanfic is great, but their relationship is based on a fanon trope that continues a very long legacy of slash, from Gilgamesh and Enkidu to Holmes and Watson to Harry and Draco to… it’s never going to end. But it is not canon.) The canon reality is that they hate and despise each other more than anyone else in the galaxy.

And this is the central point. I don’t think there’s any way that Kylo could accept Palpatine’s return if he’s in Hux’s body, no matter what he offers. In fact, that just might be the ONE way that guarantees at the start that Kylo will rebel. 

This is why Hux is the key. The only way that Kylo will be able to reject that tantalizing offer of power is if it comes in the package of the man he hates more than anyone in the whole galaxy. If he accepted Palpatine as his teacher, then every time he looked at him, Kylo would have to look at Hux’s hated face. That’s what will happen if this is how Palpatine returns. And this initial rebellion, in turn, has to happen in order for Kylo’s ultimate redemption to take place—because he just doesn’t have enough of an incentive for any other reason right now.

But how exactly would this play out in terms of his relationship with Rey? That's what we'll talk about in the next chapter... 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all readers, reviewers, and kudo-ers! :)

  * **So how exactly could any of this lead to Reylo in canon, or to any kind of positive relationship between Kylo and Rey?**



Kylo has to get some kind of redemption arc. The Palps!Hux theory is how we could get it, and I think it’s one of the very few logical ways that it might happen. But the question is, how does this relate to Reylo?

If we just look at what is in canon and completely suppress all fanon from our minds, it’s going to take a lot. Rey has given up on Kylo if he stays where he is and who he is. He must change radically. He must reject the dark and choose the light.

So Kylo will need to make a choice: does he want power, or does he want to turn to the light? I think this is a starting point we can all agree on. There’s really the only way that Reylo could possibly happen. Kylo has to actively reject the Dark Side in order to be ultimately redeemed. But the problem with this—and it’s a major problem—is that it’s totally unrealistic for Kylo to suddenly turn to the light for no particular reason. We’ve already seen in both TFA and TLJ that it just isn’t going to work for him to “feel a pull towards the light.” If that was all it took, then he wouldn’t have killed Han Solo. The only way this turn will work is if it happens in stages rather than all at once. Doing an instant 180 on the evil-ness thing wouldn't make any narrative sense. We know from new canon material, such as the Darth Vader comics series, that Vader didn't make a sudden choice to reject Palpatine with absolutely no buildup. It only looked that way on film. I think that with Kylo, something similar has to happen. He will make an initial choice that is not yet 100 percent redemption. But if he does make this choice, then he’s redeemable, which would make Reylo possible. 

It really comes down to this: the central conflict in TRoS, whatever it is, has to ultimately lead to Kylo’s redemptive choice. The plot arc has to end in redemption. But it does need to be an arc, and we need to have an inciting incident that initially pushes Kylo into rebellion against the dark side. This has to happen as a first step before the much later step of genuine redemption is possible. And while it might seem obvious, the mechanics of the plot have to put Kylo in the position where he has to make the initial choice one way or the other.

I totally admit that I do not know the exact mechanics of how this is going to work. Maybe Palpatine possesses Hux and then offers Kylo the choice to join him without Rey there. Maybe he takes over Hux while Rey _is_ there (in the new throne room or somewhere similar.) Maybe we get the Palps!Hux possession scene early on, before anybody else knows about it. Maybe Kylo and Rey fight each other before they figure out that Hux is _already_ possessed by Palpatine, and once they do realize the truth, they start to work together. That’s why we have preview scenes of the two of them fighting, but then we also see them working together to destroy Darth Vader’s helmet (I really like that idea.) So the Palps!Hux theory could also explain why we see these two fighting against each other and yet also together. There had to be a turning point that caused them to change from one to the other. Realizing that Palpatine has possessed Hux could be exactly what it is.

If we start from the possession theory scenario, we can visualize some scenarios of how this could actually happen. Here’s just one example. I could easily picture a scene where there has been tension between Hux and Kylo, Rey is there for whatever reason (possibly captured and brought in), and then Hux reveals himself as the Second Coming of Palpatine. Kylo has to decide whether or not he’s going to accept this, because it isn’t just a matter of working with Hux anymore. He now understands that Palpatine is the one who’s been pulling the strings, and refusing to work with him would mean rebellion against the most powerful figure of all, not just a clash with Hux. 

So Kylo’s temptation is to accept Palpatine’s offer and be his right hand, taking over where his grandfather left off, “finishing what his grandfather started.” Will Palps succeed where he failed with both Vader and Luke by capturing Anakin’s grandson and Luke’s nephew? Or… will Kylo rebel? If he does, then Rey will work with him. If he doesn’t, she won’t.

If this choice had been offered to Kylo during TLA, I actually think he would have accepted it. Even with Palpatine wearing Hux’s body and face, this is a way to gain incredible power. But by TRoS, it’s a completely different story—not because Kylo is going to have a sudden, unrealistic turn to the light, but because so much more animosity has happened between him and Hux. 

The only way his redemption can happen, and certainly the only way that Reylo is going to happen in canon is if the rebellion happens first, if Kylo does reject Palpatine at the critical moment, resisting his offer and his allure. When he does this—for whatever reason-- Rey understands that he can be redeemed after all. The original rebellion does not need to happen for the most high-minded reason. It only needs to be the trigger for his later redemption.

And Kylo actually isn’t the only one who has reasons to hate Hux. Rey also has incentive with the Palps!Hux scenario, because she’s going to need more motivation too. She’s never had direct, face to face confrontation with Hux, but she has an incredibly close friendship with Finn, who definitely has. By this point, I guarantee that he’s told her the story of how he and Rose came thisclose to being killed on Hux’s orders. By TRoS, I think that Rey and Rose also have a strong friendship. So Rey has every reason to put a personal face on her hatred of Palps!Hux. And if there actually is anything about this scenario that tempts her to join Palpatine (which I doubt, but it’s not impossible,) then the Hux factor is another reason not to.

Rey and Kylo need to team up against Palpatine in Hux’s form, and this is exactly what they then would do. This is what leads to them destroying the Darth Vader helmet, and it’s also why we saw Palpatine’s throne in the trailers. From all the hints and clues and material we have, if he turns and she works with him, we’ll get some variety of Reylo. I don’t pretend to know what kind. Maybe it actually will be some romantic variety, and maybe it won’t. It might not be the happy Jedi babies ending, but it will happen. And it can only happen if with the Palpatine possession theory.

There are lots of variations on exactly how this could play out. I guarantee that I haven’t figured out every detail. I really don’t know exactly how Kylo’s redemption would play out in the plot, so I’m not even going to try to make any predictions about that. But it’s important to remember that the initial rebellion is not the redemption—it’s just the trigger that makes redemption possible. And I think that this is a very plausible scenario for how it happens.

So what kind of canon evidence do we actually have for this idea? Is there anything more specific than what we've talked about already? In the next and final chapter, we'll discuss some key clues scattered through recent canon... and we'll wrap up the theory by speculating on what all of this might mean for the fandom. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all readers, kudo-ers, and reviewers! The final chapter is UP before the movie comes out, proving that miracles really do happen. Enjoy. :)

We’ve already covered a certain amount of supporting evidence from canon and Legends for this theory. But at the end of the day, I think we need more supporting material that specifically relates to Hux’s choice. None of this will work unless Hux goes along with Palpatine’s possession plan. In fact, he needs to welcome it. Without any additional signs or indications, the idea falls into that vague category of “seems like a good idea, but there isn’t any proof at all.” Is there any additional information in canon that might support Hux’s choice?  
  


Yes. There definitely is. To find it, we need to critically examine the clues about Hux in the promo material, and then we particularly need to look at information from recent non-film canon.

First of all, let’s look at the hints in TRoS trailers, pictures, and posters to date. I think that the promo hints are largely important through omission, while the canon hints are much more explicit.

Hux hasn’t specifically been in any of the trailers, and when you think about it, this is strange. We see the First Order fleets, but we don’t see the general. We see the attacks, but we don’t see the person responsible for leading them. This doesn’t make much sense—unless showing Hux would give too much away. It’s similar to the way that we hear Palpatine’s voice all over the trailers, but we never see him. Showing his form, if he really has possessed Hux (or anyone else), would give the plot twist away.

The new Hux photos that we have for TRoS are also very telling. One is a great medium closeup of Hux, and he’s the only figure in the photo. There are absolutely no clues as to what’s going on. His face is completely neutral. His stance gives nothing away. This is not the way that other characters have been shown in recent promo material. There is nothing visible that gives any hints as to what he’s doing, what he’s thinking, what his role is, or how he’s interacting with other characters.

It’s very similar to what we see in the German international TRoS poster. Hux is prominently featured. His figure is actually at least as large as Kylo’s in the composition. But we can’t see anything at all about what he’s actually doing or what his role is. This is very suspicious in itself. And I think it reinformces the idea that if we even have a hint that Palpatine’s takeover of Hux is a central plot thread, then it would give the show away.

We have an older photo of Hux in the summer Vanity Fair article that does show him interacting with someone else, but what’s interesting is what he is doing: clearly plotting something with Allegiant General Pryde. This is exactly how Palps possessing Hux would behave, especially before everyone else knew about the possession. Hux/Palps would be conspiring against Kylo with another disgruntled officer (particularly if Kylo had previously rejected being the victim of an “essence transfer.”)

In the newest TRoS scene released on Dec. 12th, I think that this argument is reinforced even more from the other side. We hear Palpatine's voice (and that's all I'm going to say in case you're reading this before the film and you still haven't seen the new material.) But we don't see him. Palpatine's form is still being concealed. If the actual form he takes in TRoS isn't important, then why not show it? There has to be a reason to conceal Palpatine's appearance, and if this theory is true at all, it's because he's taking someone else's shape: Hux's body. 

When I originally was working on this essay in August, I had this to say: “At this point (August 2019), we just don’t have that much canon material yet for TRoS, which I think is deliberate. As we get more, I think we’ll start to see more Hux—but not enough to give anything away. “ And that’s exactly what has happened.

But the most significant evidence of all, by far, comes from Hux’s dialog in the _Rise of Resistance_ comic. He’s speaking to one of his childhood tormentors, a friend of Brendol Hux who participated in abusing him during a flashback earlier in the story.

_“You. My father. Snoke. Ren. They all underestimate me. You see me as something you can control. Something weak. I am not weak. I am patient. You all have the power to destroy people. But I will outlive you all. I will hold more power than any of you.”_

Hux is determined to rise above everyone else. Being possessed by Palpatine would certainly do this. But that isn’t the most interesting part of this quote. The idea of “outliving” everyone else is the most fascinating nugget of info from this entire source (and there are a lot of them.) I think this actually may be the **best single canon clue to the Palps!Hux endgame.** Think about it. How can anyone in Star Wars “outlive” everybody else? We’ve never received any canon info that this is possible in any normal, standard way. The one and _only_ way this makes sense is if Hux is taken over in a force transfer “possession” by Palps. Then, he really can “outlive” everyone.

The final clue is in the author’s commentary at the end, when he’s talking about Hux’s position after the end of TLJ: _“It is a situation that makes him more dangerous than any of his enemies in the First Order could possibly imagine. When the day finally comes that he’s pushed too far, it won’t just be the Resistance in the line of fire.”_

This hints at exactly what Palpatine would do: he wouldn’t just destroy the Resistance. He would get rid of anyone in the First Order who challenged his power. And it hints at how Hux would be driven to accept this possession—he doesn’t see any other way to have more power than the others and to outlive them all. This is what he wants more than anything else. Maybe this is triggered by a specific incident that we can’t even guess at yet, but this moment of choice does have to happen and will happen.

  * **So what does this mean for fanon?**



Do I have a dog in the hunt? I do like a lot of things about both Reylo and Kylo’s redemption. But the bigger lure for me is the idea of Hux playing a more important role. The possession theory would make Hux a lot more interesting in canon. He’ll have something to do, and he’ll become a fascinating villain instead of a rather cardboard one. There are also the fanon possibilities. The door is opened for Hux to be written in a much more interesting variety of ways. Not only do we have the similarities between Palpatine, we have all the differences, and there are a lot.

Armitage had a horrible abusive childhood in canon. From Legends, we know that Palps had everything handed to him on a durasteel platter and ended up being the villain anyway. Nothing in the Disney canon points towards the truth being anything different from what was already established. Grand Moff Tarkin was much the same. He was a product of his upbringing, but he also had a pampered childhood. He’s never been all that interesting to me as a villain because of it, and I’ve just never felt that he believed in much of anything besides power. Phasma certainly had a very difficult childhood, but it was exactly the same kind of extremely difficult life that everyone else in her community also had. We’re clearly shown that people who grew up right alongside Phasma and suffered everything she did still turned out to be decent human beings.

Hux is very different. He gets something that none of those others do—a tragic backstory that would clearly lead to where he is today. He’s one of the few major villains we’ve ever had in Star Wars who has a compelling reason _why_ he became the villain instead of the hero (or even antihero.) His capacity for goodness was destroyed by abuse. It’s not impossible that he could have turned out better than he did, but it was always going to be extremely unlikely. He is one of the most genuinely tragic villains of any standing who we’ve ever really seen in this universe, right up there with Vader and Count Dooku. And when we look at the recent canon material that we have about Vader’s early struggles and Dooku’s’ background, the comparison becomes even more interesting.

Hux, Dooku, and Vader all have one quality that Palpatine (and Snoke) never did: a completely sincere, if totally misguided, belief that they are doing the right thing for the universe rather than only for themselves. Armitage Hux genuinely believes in the ideals of the First Order and honestly thinks that the Republic would have destroyed the galaxy, and that the Resistance will do the same thing if they can. By using Starkiller Base as a weapon, in his mind, he killed millions/billions to save quadrillions. Count Dooku was passionate about the Separatist cause. And look what we just got—a new book that makes Dooku into a tragic, sympathetic figure. Honestly, an argument could be made that Dooku was ultimately responsible for even more death and destruction than Hux has perpetrated up to this point (and Vader certainly surpassed Hux’s body count within a few years after he turned to the dark side.) Palpatine on the other hand, has never really believed in anything except power, and his dream of cracking the secret of eternal life.

In Star Wars, there has always been a very specific ethos about who gets redeemed, who is at least capable of redemption and who is completely beyond hope. And the difference has been: does the character have a tragic past or reasons why they became a villain? Do they genuinely believe in what they’re doing? And do they repent, even at the last possible second? If Darth Vader can be redeemed, then the reality is that both Kylo Ren and Hux could too. I think that with Kylo, it will happen. With Hux, it won’t, but could. So in fanon, I think that Hux can and will be redeemed, which makes him so much more interesting. He’ll be a tragic figure, not a whiny floor mop.

Of course, the amount of Kylux from all this will be beyond all belief. But I think we’ll also see a LOT more Reylux because of the interactions between Kylo, Rey, and Hux. And we have a good chance of getting onscreen interaction between Rey and Hux for the first time. So we’re going to get a lot more Reyux, which I’d be happy about, because I love writing that ship. 😉 But I think that those ships, unlike some variety of Reylo, are guaranteed to remain in the realm of fanon. We’ll just have a lot more material to work with, and I would predict that post TRoS, you’ll be seeing a lot more of the fics.

In canon itself, of course, the ship this theory cements is Reylo of some kind. It’s really the only way that canon Reylo can happen. Not necessarily white wedding, romance, babies, flying off into the sunset together, but a Reylo relationship of some kind. And for all of these reasons, I think that it will.

So now it’s time for your thoughts! 😊 What do YOU think about this theory? Does any of this makes sense to you? Can you see it happening in TRoS? If not, why not? What do you think will happen? And thanks for being an AniseCrazyTheory!reader!

**WORKS CITED:**

Dawson, Delilah S. (2017) Phasma: Journey To Star Wars, the Last Jedi.

Foster, Alan Dean (2016) The Force Awakens.

Fry, Jason (2018) The Last Jedi: Expanded Edition. 

Grossman, Lev (2019) _Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,_ The Ultimate Preview. Vanity Fair.

Scott, Cavan (2019) Dooku: Jedi Lost.

Taylor, Tom, Noto, Phil, and Kirk, Leonard (2019) Star Wars: Age Of Resistance - General Hux (2019) #1 (Star Wars: Age Of Resistance)

**ONLINE SOURCES:**

Brin, David. _"Star Wars" despots vs. "Star Trek" populists._<https://www.salon.com/1999/06/15/brin_main/>

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars%3A_The_Rise_of_Skywalker>

<https://screenrant.com/star-wars-9-richard-e-grant-general-pryde/>

<https://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/21/movies/moviesspecial/george-lucas-im-a-cynic-who-has-hope-for-the-human-race.html>

The German poster showing Hux (and also a Porg):

<https://oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/stg.ign.com/2019/11/Rise-of-Skywalker-International-Poster.jpg>

The trend over the past several years for blockbuster trailers to give too much away:

<https://www.marketplace.org/2019/07/03/to-get-people-to-theaters-movie-trailers-have-been-giving-away-entire-plots/>

List of elements Disney has taken from Legends:

<https://io9.gizmodo.com/everything-star-wars-has-reintroduced-from-the-old-expa-1792224856>


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